The other night at the ICOI qiyam, these verses kept running through my head:
“O’Mankind! We created you from a single pair of male and female, and made you into nations and tribes that you might get to know one another. Surely, the noblest of you in the sight of Allah, is he who is the most righteous. Allah is All-Knowledgeable, All-Aware.” (49: 13)
“There has come to you from Allah a new Light and a clear book, with which Allah will guide to the ways of peace all those who seek His good pleasure and bring them out of the depth of darkness into the light of His grace and guide them to the right way.” (5:14-16)
All I could say to myself as I sat there and I looked around at the diversity of our community was SubhanAllah. If you know me you most likely have heard me talk about this before…and I can’t help it. As I sat there outside in the tent, I heard around me so many different languages, Spanish, Arabic, Urdu, Chinese and English. And as I sat and quietly observing, I was in awe of all the different ethnicities within our community. I wondered their stories and how they were brought to Islam. SubhanAllah…it makes me happy. It is easy to forget in our very busy lives the context of what we are living in and living through. But as Suhaib Webb said, “we are the ummah of the prophet” and we really are blessed to be such a close, diverse and knit tight community. Alhamdullilah.
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2 comments:
I was going to blog about the ICOI qiyam but you beat me to it. :)
I think I still will, in a bit..
And subhanAllah, I agree - I remember standing there talking to a group of sisters, all of whom wore similar clothing but were Egyptian, Caucasian, and Indian/Puerto Rican respectively. The diversity of this Ummah is such a beautiful gift, masha' Allah. Now if only racism didn't exist. :)
Among other things, the Sami Yusuf nasheed below makes a point of showing the different shades, shapes, and colors of Muslims:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Zt7TDNICI
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